Report - Bush Considers Nuclear Strikes on Iran

Since 04-10-06

Saturday, April 8, 2006 11:13 p.m. EDT
http://www.newsmax.com/archives/ic/2006/4/8/232258.shtml?s=et 

The Bush administration is planning to use nuclear weapons against Iran, to prevent it acquiring its own atomic warheads, according to a new report.

Longtime investigative reporter Seymour Hersh, who claims to have high-level Pentagon and intelligence contacts, said President Bush is said to be so alarmed by the threat of Iran's hard-line leader, Mahmoud Ahmedinejad, that privately he refers to him as "the new Hitler."

Hersh, who broke the story of the Abu Ghraib Iraqi prisoner abuse scandal, makes his new claims in The New Yorker magazine, according to the London Telegraph. [Editor's Note: Will Iran launch a pre-emptive strike on the U.S. Find out about 'Avoiding Nuclear D-Day' in this special report -- Click Here Now.]

Some U.S. military chiefs have unsuccessfully urged the White House to drop the nuclear option from its war plans, Hersh writes in The New Yorker. The conviction that Ahmedinejad would attack Israel or U.S. forces in the Middle East, if Iran obtains atomic weapons, is what drives American planning for the destruction of Tehran's nuclear program.

Hersh claims that one of the plans, presented to the White House by the Pentagon, entails the use of a bunker-busting tactical nuclear weapon, such as the B61-11, against underground nuclear sites. One alleged target is Iran's main centrifuge plant, at Natanz, 200 miles south of Tehran.

Although Iran claims that its nuclear program is peaceful, U.S. and European intelligence agencies are certain that Tehran is trying to develop atomic weapons. In contrast to the run-up to the Iraq invasion, there are no disagreements within Western intelligence about Iran's plans.

The Telegraph disclosed recently that senior Pentagon strategists are updating plans to strike Iran's nuclear sites with long-distance B2 bombers and submarine-launched missiles.

The military option is opposed by London and other European capitals. But there are growing fears that the British-led push for a diplomatic solution to the Iranian nuclear stand-off, will be swept aside by hawks in Washington.

Hersh says that within the Bush administration, there are concerns that even a pummelling by conventional strikes, may not sufficiently damage Iran's buried nuclear plants.

Iran has been developing a series of bunkers and facilities to provide hidden command centers for its leaders and to protect its nuclear infrastructure, the Telegraph reports.

The lack of reliable intelligence about these subterranean facilities is fueling pressure for tactical nuclear weapons to be included in the strike plans as the only guaranteed means to destroy all the sites simultaneously.

The attention given to the nuclear option has created serious misgivings among the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, and some officers have talked about resigning, Hersh has been told. The military chiefs sought to remove the nuclear option from the evolving war plans for Iran, without success, a former senior intelligence officer said.

The Pentagon consultant on the war on terror confirmed that some in the administration were looking seriously at this option, which he linked to a resurgence of interest in tactical nuclear weapons among defence department political appointees.

The election of Ahmedinejad last year, has hardened attitudes within the Bush administration. The Iranian president has said that Israel should be "wiped off the map." He has drafted in former fellow Revolutionary Guards commanders to run the nuclear program, in further signs that he is preparing to back his threats with action.

Bush and others in the White House view him as a potential Adolf Hitler, a former senior intelligence official told Hersh. "That's the name they're using. They say, 'Will Iran get a strategic weapon and threaten another world war?'"

Despite America's public commitment to diplomacy, there is a growing belief in Washington that the only solution to the crisis is regime change.

A senior Pentagon consultant said that Bush believes that he must do "what no Democrat or Republican, if elected in the future, would have the courage to do," and "that saving Iran is going to be his legacy."